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In a pair of draft decisions up for consideration Wednesday, state utility regulators have so far found no immediate need for the 300 megawatt Pio Pico Energy Center, adjacent to an existing power plant in unincorporated Otay Mesa, and the smaller Quail Brush power plant, opposite state Route 52 from Mission Trails Regional Park.

Those recommendations have set off a high-stakes lobbying offensive at the San Francisco-based California Public Utilities Commission, which has the final say on whether the generators are a worthwhile investment for utility customers in San Diego and southern Orange counties.

Plant developers -- along with the projects' allies in the utilities industry and government -- have seized on the prolonged shutdown of two reactors at San Onofre as new evidence of a pressing need for the plants.

Environmentalists and consumer advocates worry the nuclear outage will unravel efforts to show how energy efficiency and other utility-run conservation programs -- paid for by customers -- are making a difference. A new fleet of quick-start generators in San Diego, they say, is not currently necessary.

San Onofre provided for about 20 percent of San Diego's electricity before shutting down indefinitely in January 2012 because of the rapid deterioration of recently replaced steam generators. The grid has endured a year without significant failures or close calls, but utility regulators are being warned privately of a looming threat.

San Diego Gas & Electric executives traveled in person this month to urge the lead commissioner in the case, Mark Ferron, to reconsider.

"It is uncertain what will happen with the (San Onofre) units and it would be valuable to have an insurance policy on hand because of this uncertainty," SDG&E President Michael Niggli explained, according to SDG&E's written account of the meeting.

Those lining up against the plants include the utility commission’s own Division of Ratepayer Advocates, Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an alliance of six California environmental justice groups and, most recently, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner.

Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Action Network, is petitioning Gov. Jerry Brown to ensure decisions related to San Onofre are not made in haste.

"There is no danger that the lights will go out if the utilities commission rejects ... the Pio Pico and Quail Brush plants," he wrote . "The danger is that consumers will be required to pay for an expensive gas-fired plant they don’t need now or in the future."

Private equity funds already have dedicated tens-of-millions of dollars to developing the projects, and are warning that capital markets and merchant power developers could punish California.

Rejection "could lead to capital flight and inevitably questions about the integrity of (grid) reliability in the region, and ultimately leads to significantly higher rates for consumers," a partner of Energy Investor Funds, the owner of the Pio Pico, told the president of the state utilities commission.

Robert Weisenmiller, chairman of the Sacramento-based California Energy Commission that licenses power plants, is among those urging the utilities commission to disregard evidentiary proceedings under way since May 2011 and “make the factual findings necessary for Pio Pico’s approval.”

“California must be acting now to ensure system reliability in Southern California for the contingency that San Onofre will not be available through 2014, if ever,” Weisenmiller wrote to his counterpart at the utilities commission in December. “The proposed decisions find that there is no need for more generation prior to 2018, a conclusion that is simply untenable.”

The proposed plants were designed to cope with a specific and unusual set of circumstances: the failure of two major grid components -- transmission lines or generators -- on the hottest day in 10 years. (Air conditioning consumes huge amounts of electricity.)

Pio Pico and Quail Brush would do little to bolster the grid north of San Diego, where San Onofre’s steady voltage helped move power up and down the coast.

But Weisenmiller asserted that Pio Pico, the larger plant, would help ensure local power supplies in San Diego if something new goes wrong.

“I just sort of read the (draft) decisions and went, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “We could lose a transmission line, we could lose another generator ... A lot of things can go wrong.”

Weisenmiller, also a state government liaison on issues of nuclear power, said he had no direct communications with the power plant developers.

Nicole Capretz, of the National City-based Environmental Health Coalition, believes the public is being mislead.

“To the general member of the public is does seem like, ‘Oh no, San Onofre’s out, we need to build more power plants locally,'" she said. "It is just that the facts don’t support that.”

The September 2011 blackout that affected some 7 million people in Southern California, Arizona and Mexico was a result of human error and not infrastructure issues, according to a lengthy federal inquiry.

In preparation for a second summer without San Onofre, which previously generated enough electricity to power about 1.4 million homes, new transmission and infrastructure upgrades are in the works.

With state approval of Pio Pico still uncertain, the state's main grid operator went forward in September with a grid interconnection agreement for the plant, accepting a $9.2 million letter of credit from the developer. The California Independent System Operator is invoking the San Onofre outage in urging the commission to approve Pio Pico.

Concerns about local electricity supplies are complicated by deadlines for retiring generators at The Encina Power Station at Carlsbad and whether a permitted replacement plant can attract a utility to buy its electricity. An SDG&E official said power from Carlsbad was more expensive than competing proposals by Pio Pico and Quail Brush.

The Quail Brush project still faces other obstacles as it seeks state approval for the site location against heavy local opposition, including the City of San Diego's refusal to rezone the property. The project is controlled by private equity giant Carlyle Group, which manages more than $157 billion in assets.

Pio Pico, located next to an existing power plant near the U.S. border with Mexico, is much farther along.

It has received site approval from the energy commission and already signed labor agreements and equipment contracts. Union Bank of California and Societe Generale have agreed to provide financing. Equity would be supplied by the $1.35 billion United States Power Fund III, a private equity fund.